


but stay with me

by perennial



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Enemies to Lovers, I don't even ship it but, I had to scratch the itch!, Multi, Outlaw Snow is my favorite Snow, also Graham is alive, kind of a weird AU in that Hook is Emma's father IT'S FINE, ok maybe i ship it HERE but never in canon, otp: one bad turn deserves another, poor David n'est pas ici, right out the gate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-22 11:52:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4834307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennial/pseuds/perennial
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He looks at her incredulously. “Will you quit stealing from me?!”<br/>“You started it.”<br/>“<i>You</i> started it!”</p><p>In which Snow encounters not a prince but a pirate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Enchanted Forest

**Author's Note:**

> escape is in my blood  
> fear is in my bones  
> but i don’t want to walk that road  
> please help me
> 
> hold my hand  
> i can hear the ghost calling  
> help me stand  
> even if the sky is falling
> 
> [the fray – hold my hand]

The cloaked figure slips through the shadows without attracting anyone’s notice, save one.

For all that it is midnight, the town is wide awake. Shouts and laughter pour from the door of The Green Dragon, heralding a long night and heavy heads in the morning. They will wake with puddles of drool under their cheeks and be chased out by the barkeep, but the thief will be hours from this place.

She is small and quick and she has learned how to make an ally of the darkness. Even in the daytime this would be a dangerous town, full of pirates and worse, and she is careful. Her business at the dock went as well as could be expected; now she can turn her full attention to the pickings to be had by those too inebriated to notice their valuables being relocated from their pockets to hers. By dawn she will be back at her hiding place, where food and much-needed sleep await.

She bumps into a group of drunken sailors outside the bar and hurries past them down the street. She has almost reached the corner when quick steps sound behind her. A body slams into hers, pushing her against the dirty tavern window. Her fisted hand is trapped: a hook pins her wrist to the windowsill.

“Drop them.”

She twists her arm into the air, knife in hand, but he already has a blade to her throat. The sudden stinging line along her skin tells her that he has drawn blood. Unwillingly, she opens her hand. The gemstones she pilfered from his pocket clatter onto the windowsill. Her captor says, “Seems I’ve caught myself a magpie.”

The sailor—no, _pirate_ , just her luck—pulls back her hood. She tries to shield her face from the light coming through the tavern window.

“You’re a girl,” he says, surprised.

“Woman,” she snarls, wishing she could cut off his other hand. Still, the worry around her heart lessens slightly. He is a foreigner; he does not recognize her.

He considers her impassively. “You’re quite pretty. Shall I add you to the payment I owe Blackbeard? He’s partial to brunettes.” He studies her, then shakes his head regretfully. “I’ve a feeling you’d be too much trouble. However, you did steal from me, and you must pay penance.” He moves his knife down her throat and with a quick motion cuts the cords of the vial that hangs around her neck, catching the strings as it falls.

She stifles a cry—so much depends on that vial.

“What’s this, then?” he says, shaking it lightly.

“Just a memento,” she tells him.

“I’m very nostalgic,” he says, pocketing it.

She closes her eyes. “What do you want for it?”

He raises one eyebrow. “You have something worth bartering?”

She bites her lip, angry. Pulling her shirt out of her breeches—“ _Not that_ ,” she tells the pirate, who is grinning—she unbuckles the money purse strapped to her waist. Dumping the gold pieces on the windowsill beside the gemstones, she looks defiantly up at him. “All yours.”

“Ah, ah,” he chides. “That is only the rest of your penance.” He sheathes his knife and gathers up the shining pile, which vanishes into the pocket after the vial. His hook still traps her other hand.

“Now,” he says, “about that barter?”

She glares at him, speechless with fury.

“Ah. Then we are at a standstill. I suppose you’d like to bow out gracefully.” He releases her hand and steps back.

She slaps him hard enough that the _crack_ of it echoes off the close alley walls. His hand goes up to his face. Anger tinges his eyes. His pocket is there, _right there_ , wide and unguarded—but he is too big for her to fight, and he’s got that hook-hand that she has no desire to get close to.

“Don’t think you’ve seen the last of me,” she spits, and is surprised to see his face light with a breathtaking smile.

“I certainly hope not,” he replies, or she thinks he does—she is already away into the darkness around the corner.

*    *    *

It takes her a full thirty minutes to make her way from the gangway to the captain’s quarters, but she does it without interference, moving with the shadows and the creaking of the sleeping ship.

A search of the moonlit room leaves her frustrated and empty-handed. He sleeps without a shirt, which tells her with one glance that her vial is not tied around his neck. Nor is he wearing his hook, though she’d be willing to gamble on him having a knife under his pillow.

If the vial was in the pockets of his breeches, he would have crushed the thin glass and effectively eliminated himself. She grinds her teeth. Her only remaining option is to question him.

A blade to his throat rapidly brings him to full consciousness.

“Not a sound,” she hisses.

“Just the way I like to be woken up; how did you know?” he mutters, rubbing his eyes with his fingertips.

“Give me back my vial.”

“And here I thought you were here to apologize.”

She snorts. “What would I have to apologize for?”

He gestures to his cheek, which she can tell even in the dim light boasts a rising bruise.

“It’s an improvement.”

He barks a laugh, then leans his tousled head closer to her. “Do you think so, love?”

She purses her mouth. “ _Vial_.”

“Too late.” He shrugs. “I told you I owe Blackbeard money. Every little bit helps.”

Her heart starts to race. “You didn’t.”

“I don’t bloody joke about payments to Blackbeard.”

“Where does he make berth?”

He raises an eyebrow. “You’re not seriously going after _Queen Anne_? What’s so important about this vial that you’d risk death to get it back?”

She glares at him, stubborn and silent.

“Nostalgia, right. You know, magpie, my suggestion is that you let this one go.”

She drops her eyes to his collarbone. Her mouth pulls into a thoughtful moue. “Perhaps you’re right. After all, adaptation is the key to survival.”

“Exactly. You should be thanking me for this opportunity to expand your skill set. Challenge yourself!”

“Oh, I do,” she replies. “And don’t say I never did you any favors.”

At his puzzled expression she dangles his hook in front of his face.

He yells and grabs for it, but she is faster and has the advantage of surprise. She is out the door and up the stairs before he has even collected himself to chase her. Her feet pound down the gangway, adrenaline surging through her body. Behind her she can hear a confusion of voices, and, raised over all of them, his voice bellowing orders. She grins to herself and slides away into the darkness, the path to escape clear and unhindered before her.

*    *    *

Sunlight falls in golden lines through the trees down to the forest floor. Birdsong and the hum of insects filter through the summer wind weaving through the leaves and grass. A nearby creek sparkles as though diamonds hide beneath its surface. The sky seen through the treetops is deep blue.

The pirate thrashing through the undergrowth can be heard for miles. He comes to a halt in a clearing and looks around, squinting. Nothing indicates that the place is inhabited by anyone else. He scowls at his compass. Rotating on his heel, he takes a survey of the surrounding flora and finds it empty. A string of muttered curses joins nature’s chorus.

He shouts, “I found your bloody note.”

She watches him from where she reclines in the crook of a thick tree bough. A knife has been lashed to his handless arm, giving it the resemblance of a bayonet. His crew is camped at a river fork a few miles away, just a line of smoke in the distance.

“I know you’re here!”

He paces around the clearing, swatting at bugs and growing hotter by the minute in his black shirt and vest. For a while he has nothing to do but watch the shadow of the treeline move infinitesimally across the grass. Finally, sulking, he gives in and pulls out the vial and waves it at his unseen audience. “Do you want it or not?”

She drops silently onto the loamy ground behind him. The instant her feet touch down she notches an arrow to her bow. His exposed neck makes a perfect target.

He pivots toward the noise and smiles humorlessly at the arrow. “Magpie,” he greets her.

“Hook.” She tilts her head. “Or are you going by a different name in the interim?”

He looks annoyed. “Where is it, anyway?”

She only smiles sweetly and nods toward the vial. He growls; it flashes briefly in the sun as it arcs across the clearing into her gloved hand. She fastens it around her neck before going to a hollow tree a few feet away, out of which she pulls the hook apparatus. As soon as she has tossed it, her bow and arrow are back in place and her wary attention fixed on him, alert for any nasty surprises he might have planned.

The pirate undoes the makeshift bayonet, briefly exposing the pale stump of his wrist. He deftly straps the hook back on. His arm rotates, adjusting, and she can tell when all is back in place because satisfaction shines from him to be intact and dangerous again. The tension in the lines of his body changes to eagerness. She wonders how long he has worn it, for it to have truly become an extension of his arm.

He looks up and follows the direction of her gaze.

“I’m not ashamed of it,” he tells her. There is a defiant light in his eyes.

“Why should you be?” she answers, surprised.

He looks at her, frowning a little. His eyes search hers and for a moment all she can see is blue, dark as deep ocean.

He lifts his chin with an arrogance that is growing familiar. “Just saving you the bother of feeling sorry for me, love.”

“Do I look like I would ever feel sorry for you?”

“Provided a reason, yes, I believe you would,” he retorts.

“Shall we consider who, here, is wielding the hand of death? _You’re_ hardly the one I’d feel sorry for.”

He looks pleased.

“Now,” he says, “is there an easier way to get out of here than it was to get in?”

“Yes.” She begins to melt back into the trees, half turned in order to both keep her arrow trained on him and choose her path.

“Splendid. Lead on.”

She smiles thinly. “Nice try.”

“I’m not going back through that forest by myself. There are soldiers on patrol.”

She shoots him an exasperated look. “What do you care? I doubt you’re helpless in a fight. Especially now that you’ve got that thing strapped back on.”

“True; however, I have no desire to advertise my presence in this neighborhood at the moment, and ‘this thing’ leaves a distinct mark.”

“I’m still alive,” she informs him, “because I know better than to walk into traps.”

“I will follow you to your hovel with as much noise as I can possibly make,” he informs her, “until the forest is crawling with soldiers scenting blood, and perhaps I will have to make a little mess to extract myself from their grasp, but after all, what good’s a crew if you can’t use them to clean up the bodies? Anyway, it’s not my backyard, is it? As soon as I’m back on the _Jolly Roger_ , I won’t care if there’s one soldier or one thousand running around here, looking in every nook and cranny, searching for their missing brothers-in-arms and whoever might have had a,” he chuckles, “ _hand_ in their disappearance.”

She presses her lips tightly together, wondering if it is worth it to shoot him and risk his crew hunting her to earth. He watches her, knowing her train of thought, a smile curving his lips.

She lowers her bow. “Fine. Stay ten feet away from me at all times.”

The trail she chooses avoids any proximity to the main roads and skirts the huts and cottages scattered through the forest. The terrain does not differ much from the track he took to find her, but she knows how to navigate it, and that makes all the difference.

Within moments he is shoulder to shoulder with her. She pushes him away. “Ten feet!”

Clambering over boulders, they make their way through a broad ravine that must have once been a waterway. She watches for movement in the trees and along the opposite dirt bank. The mossy ground under their feet muffles their steps.

From her right—

“Meg, I think,” he says.

She glances at him.

“Your name,” he explains. “I’m grand at naming things. Seeing as you’re in the market.”

Her eyes are always busy, scanning their surroundings. “I already have a perfectly adequate name, thank you all the same.”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong, love. Names are for calling people by, and no one can call you by yours since it’s apparently only to be divulged under pain of death.”

“Names are for finding people with.” She catches herself. He does not seem to have noticed, but she has made her first real slip all the same.

“Meg,” he repeats. “Derived from magpie. Got some history attached, you see? Everyone likes that. Easy to spell.”

They stop at a stream for a drink—three full body-lengths between them, and she hardly registers the relief of cool water filling her throat for her apprehension at what he might try when her back is exposed, until she sees that she need not worry: he is focused on the stream.

He immerses his entire head and flings water everywhere when he surfaces, shaking his head like a dog. The grin he shows her is one born of genuine pleasure: far from his ocean, he is thinking of nothing but the relief of touching water again. His hook-hand hangs quietly by his side. The rest of him is bursting with life, his eyes wet and brightened, giving her a half-bow, half-salute as though they haven’t recently held knives to each other’s throats.

“It’s worth it,” he tells her.

“I’ll remember that if I ever have the chance to become a mermaid. Come on.”

They return to the trail. The forest is peaceful. For all she is on edge, her heart sighs in contentment. Everything about this place is a feast for her eyes: golden light and green leaves and bright sky. The wind stirs the grass and the flower heads, rustling the leaves. Birds flit through the branches overhead and sing for the joy of it. Everywhere, sunshine. When she was a child she used to turn over her mother’s needlepoint to look at the mess of thread that made up the backside of each carefully stitched picture. How easy it was to turn neat rows of color into a mass of confusion, how much more difficult to decipher the image. She feels like that sometimes, here—as though she is looking at the world backwards. As though there is an entirely new picture to be found, if only she has the heart and eyes to trace it out.

The pirate falls into step beside her, water dripping off his chin. He gestures to the vial, which fell out from beneath her shirt when she knelt by the stream.

“Are you going to tell me what that thing is now?”

“No.”

“Are you going to ask me how I got it back?”

“No.”

“It’s clearly fairy-made, which means you intend to use it soon, before it starts attracting all sorts of undesirables. Which means you’ve got a mission. You were desperate to get it back—”

“Desperate is a strong word.”

“—Which means you don’t believe you can accomplish your mission without it, which means you don’t have a backup plan. Which means you’re going to land yourself in a world of trouble when your first plan doesn’t work, because they never do, and unless you’re a magician and have managed to turn your co-conspirators invisible, no one has your back.”

“Well, aren’t you clever.”

Something about her tone makes him look closer at her. She is still watching the trees, but she walks more lightly than she did a few minutes ago. His words have not sunk her back into the ground. She notices his notice and shows him a smile that makes him forget what he was about to say.

“Isn’t it a beautiful day?”

She passes ahead of him; his eyebrows knit together at her retreating back. He squints up at the trees, unconvinced.

“Where did I get it wrong?” he calls after her.

“All of it. Well, most of it. You were right about the fairy-made part.”

Her actual plan is much more simple: leave. No mission except to get away while she can.

She will not tell him what the vial does or why she is running or where she plans to go. All he manages to drag from her is that she means to go not just to another land but to another _world_. She does not have to tell him that collecting the amount she needs to purchase passage through a portal is taking longer than she would like.

He recommends piracy. “I don’t even have to threaten people anymore. Once you’ve established your reputation, captives will hand their jewels to you without being told.”

“I only steal from those who don’t deserve their riches.”

He looks disgusted. “I’ve already encountered one outlaw with that view, and one of him is more than enough for this world. Believe me, love, you’ll never get anywhere unless you learn to strike first and ask questions later.”

She rolls her eyes. “Thank you for that high-seas wisdom, Captain.”

He shakes his hook at her. “I know what I’m about.”

She is just as serious as he when she tells him, “So do I.” Somewhere inside her is a woman who is not yet desperate enough to hurt others to get what she wants. Every morning she wakes and hopes that woman will survive the day. Yes, she is smart and strong enough to take from those who live in peace—but in return her heart will be swallowed by darkness, and she will not, _she will not_ lose her heart, not to anything or anyone. That means asking every question first, striking only when there is no other option. It means sleeping in the dirt, never having a full belly, keeping friends safe by staying away.

He shakes his head. “Don’t come crying to me when you have a run in with a witch and get yourself cursed. Or get someone you love cursed. Or maimed or kidnapped or killed.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“You want to know what happens when you put others before yourself? You wind up in the same place, and all alone.”

“Still better than hurting someone who didn’t deserve it.”

“Other people can learn to look out for themselves, just as we have.”

“Just because someone finds themself in a situation where they don’t have the advantage does not mean they deserve what they get,” she argues. “You might accidentally make an enemy you have no idea how to defeat, and—and…” She realizes what she is saying.

He smiles a little. “And?”

“Why don’t you want your presence here noticed?” she counters.

“Because, dear Meg, I _do_ have a plan, but I don’t fancy making my move just yet.”

“You’re going to hurt someone.”

His face darkens. “Oh, aye.”

“You have heard, haven’t you, that good always conquers evil?”

“That would require one of us to be good, love. As it is, I have a fighting chance.”

“Who are you after?”

“A monster. He took something from me and he’s yet to pay for it.”

She lets this roll around in her mind. “What are you going to do?”

“Disable him. Kill him while he’s too weak to fight.”

“How?”

“Oh, that interests you, does it? Too bad. I’ll share my secrets when you share yours.”

She stops so abruptly that he almost runs into her. “Ten feet,” she murmurs automatically. Something in the woods has caught her attention, and she stands so still it makes him wonder if she is breathing. She listens hard, her eyes searching for the source.

When she finds it she springs back to life with a laugh of relief. “I thought it was a patrol scout,” she tells him, pointing into the trees. He peers over her shoulder. A blur of brown and gray takes form. A stag the size of a small hut is passing beneath the trees some distance from them.

“There must be water nearby.” She is right. This time it is a small pool fed by an underground spring. She holds her knife as she drinks—a little conversation does not mean he doesn’t have something up his sleeve—but there is only one body length between them.

Hook excuses himself and vanishes over a ridge to relieve himself. When he returns, she is perched on a boulder, examining something she holds.

“Funny,” she says. “You don’t strike me as the jewelry type. Except for that… earring.”

He looks at her incredulously. “Will you quit stealing from me?!”

“You started it.”

“ _You_ started it!”

She holds up the ring, a gold band with an emerald embedded in it. “Who is this meant for?”

He stomps up to her. “It’s not meant for anyone,” he says, snatching it away. “It’s a finding ring.”

She hops off the boulder and snatches it back, turning it over in her fingers, looking for the line of light. Only when she steps into the shadows does she find it, stretching away from her into the forest, faint and thin as a thread of spiderweb, invisible where the sun hits it.

“Where is the other one?”

“The _Jolly Roger_. My ship.”

She hands it back to him. “Must be nice,” she says, not quite meeting his eyes. “Always knowing where home is.”

He pockets the ring and looks at her sideways. She stares into the trees. Her thoughts are miles away; she does not even have her knife drawn.

Then she stirs herself and remembers him. He quirks his mouth up in what almost looks like sympathy and indicates their forest path. “Come along, Meg.”

*    *    *

The forest slopes down into the river valley.

If either traveler notices that their determined march through the woods has slowed to a saunter, they do not mention it. They are close enough to the pirates’ camp to catch intermittent puffs of smoke on the breeze. She could leave him here and he would be able to find his way with ease.

“…and after all the trouble we went to, getting it baked and poisoned and wrapped, they didn’t even eat it! They just let it sit, until it was hard as a rock, and then they used it for the catapult in their war-games, and I– and my first mate tripped over it in the dark and sprained his ankle.”

She is laughing and he is watching her face, and so neither of them see Smee until they have nearly fallen over him. Hook swears and demands to know why his boatswain is wandering through the woods carrying a stack of dead branches.

Smee does not seem to hear his captain. He stares at the thief with eyes like saucers. “You’re that princess they’re hunting.”

She stops as though turned to stone.

“It’s her, cap’n! It’s Snow White, the one that queen is searching for!”

Hook looks sharply at her.

“There’s a reward!” Smee tells him. “It would cover your debt to Blackbeard, and the next one, too!” Then he drops the wood with a shout, pointing.

Snow is running as fast as she can back through the woods, dodging trees and leaping over fallen logs, skidding down dirt inclines and through creekbeds. Her only hope is speed. If there is anything she has learned this morning, it is that Hook is a reluctant but gifted tracker; he could not have found her in the clearing otherwise. If she can outrun them, she can work on throwing them off her trail further on.

From behind her, the wind carries Hook’s voice to her ears, bellowing her name through the forest. She charges up the slope, lungs burning.

The forest road runs close to this place. Snow veers toward it, deciding that she doesn’t have time to trip over branches and rocks. One quick glance behind her shows her an empty forest, but that does not mean they aren’t mere minutes behind. She bursts out of the trees and onto the road—

—directly into the arms of a Black Patrol.

She comes to a skidding halt, arms windmilling, and tries to run past them into the forest on the other side, but there is a horse to her left and three soldiers in front of her. Simply surviving the rearing hooves and a trio of swords are all that fills her mind for a moment. Clear of those, she tries to dart through the chaos, but the black figures are everywhere, and they close in around her.

She has her knife and her bow. The bow is useless here, but the arrows might be useful if she can manage to strike near their eyes. Her knife is out and ready; her thoughts go to the vial at her neck, and her heart sinks at the thought of wasting it on such as these, but if they manage to capture her she will regret not using it when she had the chance.

Two launch themselves toward her, their swords coming down hard. She can hardly parry with a dagger, and she can’t get close enough to strike. She reaches for an arrow but has to jump away from the swinging steel before she manages to grab one. Now her only defense is speed, dodging their swings, because she does not even have time to uncork her vial. Her only hope is to get away, but they are fast and vicious and for a moment she believes this is where it will end.

A glint of sun off curved steel, and a soldier’s throat becomes a waterfall of red.

Snow does not like killing people, even Regina’s soldiers. Most of them are under a spell, she knows; their violence is not their own. Some are evil through and through, of course, but it is impossible to tell the difference, so she tends to spare them all.

Hook has no qualms about killing, nor does he have fond memories of growing up under the watchful eyes of her father’s guardsmen. He delivers his attack with all the mercy of a machine.

Momentarily paralyzed with surprise and confusion, all she can do is watch the blur of black and silver—until he throws off another body and, pausing for a breath, yells, “Some help, love?”

Armed as she is, she cannot fight, so she covers him. His hook doubles as both weapon and shield; his other hand wields a sword with all the ease of a proficient. His crew is nowhere in sight, but he hardly needs them.

When the onslaught is over, half of the patrol is dead and the other half has taken flight on horseback. Bodies are strewn across the road and throughout the surrounding woods. Snow sits down, her surge of adrenaline bottoming out into sudden exhaustion. She looks at the pirate. He is cleaning his sword with the shirt of one of the fallen soldiers.

“Why did you do that?” she asks. He looks at her. “Why did you save me?”

He looks away. “Now you owe me a favor. It’s good to have a princess in one's debt.”

She says slowly, “Your monster will know you were here.”

“Aye.” He stands. “Which is why I mean to stop being here, immediately.” But he does not move, only stares at the blood on the grass by his feet. She closes her eyes, wondering what she ought to do now.

He says abruptly, “We’re sailing to Queenstown. I have… business there.” A long pause. “Need a lift?”

She opens her eyes. He is watching her, waiting.

Snow knows Queenstown; it was her mother’s favorite city, hence the name, and they used to visit every spring. She has friends and resources in the mountains nearby. Last she checked, Regina is still at the winter palace; she will not know to hunt her quarry there.

“I think that would be wise. Thank you.”

He nods as though they have conducted a business transaction. She wonders if she has just locked herself into another favor. Then she wonders what favors he thinks she can do for him, when she can hardy help herself.

He sheathes his sword. “Killian Jones, at your service.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“Fair’s fair. I know your name, you know mine.”

“Killian Jones,” she says experimentally. She wonders how long it has been since anyone called him by his given name.

“Snow White,” he replies, and grins. “Shall we?”

*    *    *

The _Jolly Roger_ is a beautiful ship. It is broad and long, its reddish wood shining around boards painted gold and green. Fast, too—even her inexpert eye can tell they are making good time.

He made the crew take all of the soldiers’ weapons, and now he makes her practice with a sword. She has not had a good training session in months, and her arms are burning within minutes. Her greatest disadvantage, however, is her unfamiliarity with the motion of the ship; it is large enough that they do not feel every bumping wave, but the floor beneath her won’t stay still. He prowls across the deck like a cat and she stumbles around after him.

She loses a second sword to the water. He tosses her another.

“Can’t we practice archery?” she pants. “This is bloody hard!”

He shakes his head reprovingly. “You’ll never catch a prince with a mouth like that.”

She lurches toward him and they begin the dance again.

He has a good eye for form, and from him comes an incessant chorus of directions and suggestions, never failing to inform her how badly she is doing.

“You just died,” he chants. “Should have blocked that. Just died. Blind side is open. Watch your feet. I just killed you. Left side. You just lost your leg from the knee down. What was _that?_ You’re dead. Over, not around. Under, not above. Hit an artery, you’re bleeding out.”

She is gladder than ever that she chose not to fight him the night they met.

“Break,” he says, nodding to the water barrel.

Snow catches her breath as she watches gulls circle above. Huge pink clouds fill a tangerine sky; the setting sun turns all the wavetops gold. The wind dries the sweat in her hair and cools her skin.

“You’re not getting worse, at least,” he tells her.

She props her sword point-down on the deck. Scanning his face, she shakes her head. “I still don’t understand. Why are you helping me?”

“I’ve no love for authority. Why should I help the queen win?”

“But you don’t care about anyone but yourself,” she replies, and immediately hates herself.

He is silent, studying the wavetops. “Well,” he says, turning away, “you would know.”

“Hook,” she says, and when he does not stop, “ _Killian_.”

It makes no difference. He keeps walking, snapping orders to the crew, and Snow can do nothing but watch him go.

*    *    *

She finds him later that night, when the ship is quiet and his anger has had time to fade.

The black sky above is strewn with stars. The water shines silver in the moonlight, and the moon throws its reflection out like a path across the sea. The pirate captain stands at the wheel in his overcoat, eyes on the water ahead, the night breeze ruffling his hair. He nods to her. She searches his face anxiously.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. I could cut out my tongue.”

“Please don’t,” he says, looking at her mouth. Her breath catches.

Without warning, something huge hits the side of the ship, flinging both of them back against the rail.

Snow picks herself up. “What was that?!”

“It was in the water.” Hook draws his sword.

They stare down at the black ocean. Nothing is visible. A long minute passes; there is no sign of whatever it was.

Hook says, “I’m not taking any chances.” He steps forward to alert the crew just a figure bursts out of the ocean behind them with a spray of saltwater.

Snow is frozen in horror. She does not hear him shouting for her to run; her eyes are glued on the huge reptilian head rising from the sea. It climbs into the sky and does not stop until it is level with the top of the foremast. Its body is as thick as an ancient oak. Its eyes are narrow, evil slits of black, and the teeth in its gaping mouth are like swords.

She scrabbles backward until she reaches the stairs down to the main deck. When she turns to run, she is brought up short by the sight that greets her. The serpent’s body is wrapped around the middle of the ship. At least six coils are visible around the main deck; two grip the hull, with a third moving into place.

“Hook!” she screams. “The ship!”

He is down the stairs in an instant, sword at the ready. He charges at it with a yell, but all the bravery in the world will not turn the serpent’s scales into anything less than impenetrable. The sword bounces off them as though scraping iron. The few crew members abovedeck do the same, with the same results.

The look on their faces is all despair. Soon the serpent will be in position, and then it will tighten its coils around the ship until the _Jolly Roger_ is in splinters. Those who do not drown will bob to the surface and be devoured. The only conceivable way of killing it is to send a sword down its throat—and the head is impossibly far away.

“Abandon ship!” Hook shouts to those who can hear him. He runs to the alarm bell and starts ringing it. “Get in a rowboat, now!” he screams at Snow.

Snow ignores him. She takes a deep breath and dashes across the deck to the coiled body. Taking the vial by its cords, she brings it down against the serpent’s scales with all the force she can.

A cloud of gray fill the air, briefly masking the body. When it clears, nothing is there. Nothing, that is, except a few shards of glass and a tiny garter snake, green and harmless and crawling quickly toward the shelter of a nearby crate.

Hook stares at her.

“Now you know. It turns the most fearsome of foes into something that can be easily conquered.” She is a little breathless.

He clears his throat. “You saved us.”

“Yes.” She looks down at the cords she still holds. “Consider my debt paid.”

“Snow,” he begins, and seems to not know what he was going to say next. His jaw works. “That was—that was meant for the queen. You didn’t have to—”

“Yes I did.”

She meets his eyes, black in the starlight. There is nothing else to say.

“I’m going to get some rest. It has been a _very_ long day,” she tells him. He nods.

“Sleep well. And, Snow? Thank you.”

She inclines her head once, the reflexive gesture of a princess. Giving him a small smile, she crosses the deck to descend to the sleeping quarters, barely making it through the crowd of pirates attempting to suffocate her with gratitude.

He watches her go.

*    *    *

Dawn lightens the world before them. The sea stays dark; the sun is hiding behind the mountain range that stretches behind the city. Pale gray sky slowly turns to rose-colors. They watch the lights along the coast slowly wink out as the sunlight strengthens. Clouds mimic a second line of mountains, burnished gold where they pile up in the sky. The wind off the ocean is cool.

The _Jolly Roger_ coasts into the harbor as the sun’s orange rim breaks free over the peaks. The city is already awake, the docks busy with merchants unloading their goods into wagons that trundle away to market. Fishing skiffs dart around the larger vessels; gulls swoop over the lines of masts that fill the harbor.

She silently holds a hand out to him. He lifts his and takes hers, but does not immediately release it. His hand is warm and strong and fits hers as though they are matching puzzle pieces. He runs his thumb across the inside of her wrist. She can feel her pulse thudding against it.

In this light, his eyes are grey.

“Let me take you to Neverland. Pan isn’t a huge improvement, but he’s not bloody Regina. I know a fairy there. She—well, she wouldn’t help the likes of me, but she’d help someone like you. You can regroup, plan your next move without having to look over your shoulder.” He says: “Or you could… I hope you know you’re welcome to stay. Here. The _Jolly Roger_  is happy to serve as your haven for as long as you may need one.”

His head is bent; his face is very close to hers.

“She will always hunt me,” Snow says softly. “I won’t lead her to you.”

She tugs her hand out of his grip—and then she is gone, vanishing down the gangway like a shadow.

He brings his hook down violently against the ship’s rail. His other hand grips the wood so tightly his knuckles are white. He stares down at the water, the rise and fall of his chest rapid, his jaw clenched.

“Killian,” she says. He turns, heart jumping, to find her returned to the head of the gangway.

Her eyes are serious. “Whatever your mission is, I hope you find peace at the end of it.”

He says nothing, only watches her as though memorizing her. When she walks away his eyes do not follow her figure as it weaves through the crowd, but hang instead in the space where she stood; and a battle rages within them.

*    *    *

Snow sits with her back to a boulder, watching sunlight flicker between the tree branches.

She studies the stream. Water tumbles over slick rocks as it rushes past. There, right where the whorls gather above the deepest part, is where she dropped a small chest of gold.

Right now she is warm and dry, and retrieving a box of gold out of the icy water holds little appeal at the moment. In a little while she will wade in and get what she came here for, then meet up with the dwarves at the spot upriver she noted on the map she sent via messenger bird this morning. Just now, though, she will enjoy the shade and the breeze while she eats lunch.

Bread, cheese, apples, and a rare indulgence: milk. She will save that for last; it will fill in the hollow spaces the food does not. She starts with one of the apples she got from a farmer’s cart just outside the city—for free, since they had just been dropped and were unsellable when even slightly bruised. Snow can live with bruises.

Digging through her pack for the fruit, her fingers first encounter something cold and metallic. She fishes out one of Hook’s finding rings. He must have dropped it in when she was not looking.

No matter which way she twists her hand, the spiderweb of light stretching from the emerald on her finger into the forest always shines in the same direction—a little bit south of her, directly into the gloom between the trees. Biting into the red skin of the apple, she considers the faint line of gold, wondering if it would point into the dirt if its partner were directly on the other side of the globe. She wonders how far one can go, if it would still work from the other side of a portal.

She chokes.

*    *    *

_her breath will still_  
_her blood congeal_

*    *    *

Snow gasps for air and opens her eyes to ones that are as blue as the horizon.

Hook lurches back, startled. His face is ashen and his eyes are rimmed red.

“You,” she says with wonder.

“You’re alive?” He breathes, “You’re _alive_.”

She sits up. They are in a copse in the pine forest, not far from the dwarves’ cottage. She has been laid out in a coffin, her braid brushed out and her jacket and breeches exchanged for a gauzy white dress. The dwarves themselves are grouped around her, exclaiming joyfully and embracing each other. She tastes apples on her tongue.

He cups her face with one hand. This close, she can see the composition of his irises, the way the lines of blue range from dark to light, like the sun on the shifting sea.

“You saved me,” she whispers. She reaches up to trace the edges of his face with her fingertips.

His smile starts in the corner of his mouth and spreads all across his face. “Aye. That I did, love.”

She smiles back up at him. “Stole a kiss, did you?”

He scoffs: “Don’t tell me you hadn’t wondered,” and she laughs.

He bends his face to hers, nose brushing her cheek, and she tips her head and presses her mouth to his. Her hand moves to the back of his head, and he hugs her to him, holding her closer. She can feel his heart pounding against hers.

Later, she asks how he knew.

He tells her he saw the queen in the city. He knew she was not supposed to be there, knew he had to warn Snow. Had been too late.

He talks quickly and she does not interrupt. It is the things he doesn’t say that reveals to her the depth of his panic, the devastation and shock at finding her dead. She looks at his still-pink eyes. She thinks of the kiss that brought her back, that to him was a final farewell.

He says other things, though. A brush with death does that—brings to the surface all the hidden things. The words come tumbling out, one after another, everything he thought he would never get to say.

Snow’s heart feels as though it has turned to gold.

*    *    *

Killian says, “Snow, we have to go.”

He stands at the rail, readying the rowboat that will take them to shore. They have talked about this moment so many times that actually enacting it feels closer to living out a memory. No stranger would know that his movements, rhythmic and strong and certain, are unwilling. The boat is packed with essentials for two, food for one. “Snow,” he repeats, turning.

She lifts a face whiter than milk to him. Her hands clutch her rounded belly—a frequent gesture over the last nine months, but this time it indicates pain.

His face is already sober and drawn, but at the sight of this, dread enters his eyes. “Not now. It can’t be now. We’re so close.”

The _Jolly Roger_ is anchored off the coast, far from Regina’s spies. They have been here for months, only going to shore for supplies and news. Waiting.

The curse is coming. Even now it is rolling toward them; they can see it through his spyglass: a cloud of purple descending from the mountain castle. Here is the queen’s revenge, her hatred so bitter and burnt that she is willing to sacrifice herself to it, sacrifice their world to it, all to destroy Snow. What it will do to them is anyone’s guess.

Even though their only hope of salvation is currently rooted on land, they have stayed here for safety’s sake, knowing once they set foot on soil they will be discovered within hours. And perhaps they might have sent Snow through the portal before now, but neither of them are willing to lose even a minute together, when each one brings them closer to the last.

Now, of course, they might never make it.

They have only had one year—a year of sunshine, he says, worth all the years of darkness coming for them. But it makes Snow angry enough to murder. She has him and she will not give him up.

He rows them to shore as fast as he can. She clenches her teeth and groans, resisting her body’s natural pull. Not yet. This baby cannot come yet, there is a plan, they have to save everyone. How will her child find them if it doesn’t know to look? How will it save them if it doesn’t know they are cursed?

The ring on Snow’s finger shows the way to the tree, the hollow tree that doubles as a portal. It will accept one body, one time only. _She cannot have this baby yet._ They walk as far as they can before she can go no further.

Steady blue eyes see her through the birth. The pain is lightning and daggers and fire. And at the end of it, a tiny cry from a third set of lungs that are breathing the wrong world’s air.

Snow loves her husband with every inch of her heart, so when she sees her daughter's face she is stunned to realize that it is not a matter of making space in her heart to love another, but it as though she has grown a second one, now beating safely and forever within Emma's chest. She has never felt anything like this new brand of love flooding through her.

She looks at Killian and knows he feels the same. (“You’ll be a wonderful father,” she has told him repeatedly for months, “I’m certain of it.” “That makes one of us,” is his constant answer.) She wishes Emma could see the way he is looking at her right now.

“Snow,” he says, and the eyes he turns to her are heartbroken.

Snow wants to scream, she wants to rip Regina to shreds, she wants to push back the curse cloud with the force of her fury. Instead she starts to cry.

“We can't lose her,” she says, not knowing she is about to lose everything. He takes the baby from her, grey-faced, and vanishes into the woods.

He comes back empty-handed.

Tears stream down both their faces and mingle with the other’s, their skin pressed together, kissing each other as though it is the last thing they will ever do.

The cloud of purple rolls over them and then everything is gone.


	2. Storybrooke

Mary Margaret has never given much thought to the marina until Henry casually mentions how much the class wants to take a field trip there.

“I guess I could look into it,” she says doubtfully. She is fairly sure there is nothing to see at the harbor beyond rusty equipment and miles of water. Her students would be better off with a nature day at the beach.

“I _really_ think it’s a good idea.”

Emma shoots Henry a look that Mary Margaret cannot interpret. “Can it, kid, or you’re uninvited to arcade night with me and Graham.”

“What’s going on?” she says suspiciously, looking back and forth at the two of them.

“Oper—”

“ _Aaa_ bsolutely nothing. Right, Henry?” Emma is standing and tugging him to his feet by his collar. “We’re practicing not manipulating people. Right? Trying to unlearn some old habits,” she tells Mary Margaret, who is not convinced.

Still, when the apartment has returned to the peace and quiet she has almost forgotten ever existed, Mary Margaret looks up the marina. There is a charter fishing business that looks promising. She dials the number, thinking she’ll leave a message for someone to call her back during business hours.

“Jones,” says a man’s voice.

“Is this—Captain Killian Jones?”

“Aye,” says the voice, and she detects a lilting accent. “Something I can help you with?”

“Oh—good—well, this is Mary Margaret Blanchard, I’m a teacher at Storybrooke Elementary. Let me ask you, do you accommodate children?”

* * *

The students are usually apt to wander when they take field trips, but now they huddle together on the wharf, paralyzed from either fascination or terror by the man before them.

“ _This_ beauty I got after a wrestling match with a full grown anaconda. I won, o’course! This’un was after a long night of drinking with a belly dancer,” the boatswain tells them proudly. They stare at his jiggling tattoos.

Another man, tall and serious-looking, comes out of the office door and greets Mary Margaret. She is relieved when he introduces himself as Starkey, chief engineer. Not all the crew will be regaling her students with bawdy stories, at least. He surveys the gaggle of children and does not look encouraged.

“Here they are, Killian,” he calls, a little apprehensively, to someone over Mary Margaret’s shoulder. She turns.

The man striding up the jetty toward her is not what she expected. His voice on the phone had sounded much older—for some reason she always places accents as older—but despite his thick fisherman’s sweater he is near her age, and he is tall and confident and the sight of him makes her heart jolt in her chest as though a rope tied around it has been yanked.

“Miss Blanchard?” he says, and for a moment all she can see is blue.

_Eyes the color of deep ocean._

She rips her gaze away, feeling heat flood her face. “Yes, and these are my students. Everyone, listen up! This is Captain Jones. From this moment until we’re done here, he’s in charge. Understood? If you’ve got that say aye aye, skipper!”

The kids cheer. The captain looks them over, grinning. “Right then, lads and lasses. We’ve some hard rowing to do, so I hope you ate a big breakfast!”

They motor out until land vanishes. The captain explains the crew hierarchy and how each person’s role plays a vital part in the functioning of the boat. He teaches them about the fishing business—what sorts of fish live off the coast of Maine and where they are shipped after being caught. Mary Margaret does not notice until he points it out that he has a prosthetic hand, showing them how it changes the way he does his job.

The kids crawl all over the boat, investigating corners the crew probably did not know existed. They are in seventh heaven, squealing with glee whenever they reel in another fish, getting to man the wheel when the captain suddenly needs assistance, jumping as high as they can and trying to land with both feet flat on the rolling deck. The good-natured crew is kept busy, showing them how to drop their fishing lines correctly into the water, fielding dozens of questions about meeting mermaids and pirates, pulling back children who lean too far over the rail. Mary Margaret rotates around the deck, checking lifejackets incessantly—there are two repeat offenders whose buckles are always undone—and giving miniature lessons about sea life and what causes waves to form.

The ocean is beautiful, she thinks, watching the sunlight dip into the water and shift the colors from blue to green to aqua. Nothing is visible on the horizon but white clouds; the warm wind embraces her like a friend. She can see why people love this sort of life.

Her gaze drifts repeatedly to the captain. Their eyes meet so often it ought to be awkward, except that he grins at her each time. He is enthusiastic and patient with her students, which fills her with happiness because she adores them. Their chatter is so loud that she would barely be able hear him even if she stood next to him, but he conducts a conversation with her by way of exaggerated expressions over the heads of the kids as though she and he are the parents of this bunch, his face asking if she heard what he just heard, wondering how they ever spawned such pandemonium as this. She cannot shake the feeling that he _fits_ —that she knows the depth and width of him, despite not knowing any of the facts. It is a strange sort of recognition, like getting in a car and instinctively knowing the route to a city she’s never been.

Henry plops onto the seat beside her. “I like him.”

“So do I.”

“I told him your favorite color is green and that you go to Granny’s for coffee every morning.”

“Henry!”

“It is green, right?” he says innocently.

“Henry,” she sighs. “You can’t force things like this. I know you only want me to be happy, but you just can’t.”

“It isn’t forcing, it’s fate. You’re destined to be together. You’ll see.” He hops up to join another deck-jumping contest.

Mary Margaret avoids looking at Captain Jones after that; there is no point, after the embarrassment of appearing to have sent a ten-year-old to flirt on her behalf. She busies herself amongst her students, careful to let them monopolize her attention. If she must look in his general direction, she lets her eyes graze over him. She may be single but she is certainly not desperate.

“Thank you,” she says when it is over, shaking his hand. The last stowaway has been unearthed and the pack is trekking back toward Main Street. “They loved every minute of it.” Her smile is warm and gracious, because she does not know how to make it otherwise.

His smile is benevolent, but he is a stranger again, the businessman happy to provide a service to a kind patron. “My pleasure.” He drops her hand. She is glad she did not look overmuch at him; now she will not need to agonize over it later, since he is clearly not interested.

But she spends most of the drive home thinking about how nice his hand felt.

* * *

Mary Margaret lays down the mail on the counter, then tosses the citation to the top of the pile, tugging off her scarf with a sigh.

Emma looks over her shoulder. “A speeding ticket? _You?_ ”

“One would think there are perks to having the sheriff’s deputy for a roommate, but one would be wrong. Graham even told me I ought to show a good example to the rest of the town!”

“Still,” says Emma, picking up the ticket. “Twenty-five over. That’s got to be both a personal _and_ local record. Wanna pull out the champagne and celebrate?”

“I was distracted.”

“No kidding! Well, speed racer, how about you drive us to Granny’s? I didn’t think we’d have time to eat before the town hall meeting, but with you at the wheel, we might even squeeze in dessert.”

“Shut up. I want to change my clothes first—these smell like haddock.”

“I’ll call Granny’s and tell Ruby to have two burgers waiting.”

Mary Margaret rushes, grabbing things from the closet without totally registering what she has chosen, so when she emerges from the bathroom she doesn’t understand why Emma starts cracking up.

“What? _What?_ ”

Emma gestures to the checkered pattern of her shirt. “Mentally prepping for the Indy 500?” she wheezes.

“Oh, my gosh, let’s go. Out. Out!”

Emma’s laughter echoes in the stairwell as Mary Margaret locks the door behind them.

* * *

Town hall has started on time only twice in Mary Margaret’s memory. Tonight no one can get the overhead projector to work, and Leroy and his gang are at the front, bickering over which cord goes where and who wired the building in the first place. Everyone else mills around, chatting and drinking too much soda for right before a meeting.

“We should have gone for the cheesecake,” Emma tells her.

“Miss _Blanchard_ ,” says the last voice Mary Margaret wants to hear, in the tone she least wants to hear it. Her heart sinks. Interactions with Regina are her least favorite part of—well, life.

The mayor marches up to them with fire in her eyes. “Who peed in her Cheerios?” Emma mutters. Mary Margaret quickly runs through a mental list of what could have set her off this time, and comes up empty.

“Regina? Is there a problem?” she asks, confused.

“I thought there was no limit to what the two of you would stoop to if it meant undermining my authority in this town and over my own son, but putting Henry’s life at risk is beyond appalling. The field trip waiver form required a parent’s signature. Meaning, _Miss Blanchard_ , that in order for him to set food on that boat Henry’s _parent_ had to _sign it_.”

Emma says, “She did.”

“You are neither Henry’s legal parent nor legal guardian, Miss Swan. As for you, Miss Blanchard, you took my son into a dangerous environment without my express, _required_ permission. I will have your job for this, mark my words.”

A lemon-yellow sheet of paper flutters in the air next to their heads, accompanied by a man’s voice saying, “Any chance you’re looking for this?”

Mary Margaret wheels around, stunned. Captain Jones stands there, smirking and holding a copy of one of the waiver forms. Henry sidles up behind him, which would have garnered a sharp remark from Regina on tardiness and wandering were she not fixated on the paper the captain is showing them. There, sprawling across the bottom, is the unmistakable signature of the mayor.

Mary Margaret locks eyes with Emma. They both know who signed the form she brought to the marina this morning. Mary Margaret would stake her life on it, were it any moment but this.

Regina snatches at it, but it is withdrawn before she can rip it out of the captain’s hands.

“Ah, ah,” he reproves. “I have to keep the originals on file.”

“That is a forgery,” she snarls.

“If memory serves, Madam Mayor, doesn’t your official signature require a very unique ink, one that’s impossible to mimic, hence its purpose? There’s a sheen to it, and it looks almost blue when you look at it from the side.” He turns the paper as he speaks, and the black ink shines and changes color before their eyes. “And last I checked, you have surveillance monitors that would catch anyone untoward entering your office—say, with intent to steal the ink. Gifted as you are, Mayor Mills, not even you can add Miss Blanchard’s presence to those tapes.”

“Operation Lifejacket,” Henry whispers to Emma. She widens her eyes at him.

Regina is furious; Mary Margaret wonders if there actually is a way to add her presence to the surveillance tapes, because she wouldn’t put it past the mayor. Not only will she lose her job, she’ll be arrested for trespassing, theft, and forgery. Oh, and endangerment of a child. She wonders if all of those add up to a life sentence.

A black look sweeps over Regina’s face. An invisible sigh of relief sweeps through the watchers; she has lost. She was unprepared for this sudden obstruction of malice, they know; Mary Margaret wonders how her revenge will play out, and if she’ll be gunning for an additional job and a business next time. For now, all Regina can do is storm off, which she does, Henry in tow. The boy and the captain share a subtle fistbump before the former is hauled away.

Mary Margaret and Emma turn as one to gawp at Captain Jones.

He tells them, “I thought there might be trouble once I learned who the lad is. I’ve had to deal with Regina many a time. She tries to have me deported on a yearly basis. Once she almost sank my boat, though I couldn’t prove it—and it doesn’t help that the local law enforcement was in her—er—pocket.”

Emma reaches over and picks up the captain’s right hand by his jacket cuff. Tugging it back, she exposes fingertips stained a faded gray, as though someone has scrubbed long and hard at them. She silently raises an eyebrow at him, then drops the arm. “If you need me, I’ll be drinking whatever Ruby has spiked on the beverage table,” she tells Mary Margaret.

Thus abandoned, Mary Margaret doesn’t know where to look, so she stares at the waiver form the captain hands her as though she’s never seen one before.

“You can keep that,” he tells her. “Plenty more where it came from.”

“I don’t know what to say. You didn’t have to—”

“And you didn’t deserve whatever she was planning to dish out. No, don’t thank me. Pissing her off is one of my favorite pastimes.”

At that moment, the projector display flickers and a title slide appears on the screen: _Don’t Be Trashy—Recycle!_ The room cheers.

Archie taps on the mic. “Regina? Are you here? We’re ready to start. Has anyone seen the mayor? I could have sworn I saw her arrive. Could someone check the restrooms please? Everyone can take their seats now. Paging Regina.”

Emma has already taken a seat next to Henry; they wave Mary Margaret over. There is only one seat open next to them. She lingers—barely an extra second, but enough that if he wanted the chance, he could take it. He doesn’t. She turns away, embarrassed for herself, that she could make herself this pathetic. She has never gotten the hang of a poker face; her attraction must be so obvious, all but presented to him on a platter. He is not interested. And _that’s fine_ , but now all she wants to do is crawl into a hole and forget he exists.

He seats himself next to Marco, across the room and a few rows back. She does not look at him even once, but she knows where he is in the room as though she has eyes in the back of her head. Given a map, she could pinpoint his location exactly. Given a duplicate room, she could carve out the shape of him in the empty air.

Emma spends most of the meeting scanning the room for Graham, who is supposed to speak on leash laws, a task Emma will have to assume if he doesn’t show and that she has made loud and clear there will be payback for if it comes to that.

“He keeps looking at you,” she whispers, but Mary Margaret knows he isn't.

She knows for a fact that he has never been to one of these meetings. He is impossible to not notice. She can see Ruby casting sultry gazes his way. Granny winks at him more than once. Dr. Whale, sitting on his other side, looks personally offended and crosses his arms to pump up his biceps. Mary Margaret accidentally catches Ashley’s eye, who raises her eyebrows expressively. Even Mother Superior, turning around to ask her neighbor something, is momentarily struck speechless. Henry keeps leaning forward to grin at Mary Margaret, and Regina watches with narrowed eyes.

* * *

A knock at the door reveals Graham, who holds up a bottle of wine and a bag of Granny’s onion rings.

“Satisfactory,” says Emma, and lets him in.

“Do you want cocoa, Graham?” calls Mary Margaret, who is pouring out cups of it at the counter.

“Please,” he says. “Hey, Henry.”

“Hi, Graham. Do you want to be blue or yellow?”

“Who took red?”

“Who do you think?”

“Okay, make way for mugs,” says Mary Margaret. “And pizza,” adds Emma, and they shuffle the game board around until everything fits on the table.

“You should probably concede defeat right now,” Graham tells his deputy, who only rubs her hands together eagerly.

“ _You_ should probably get your tissues ready,” she tells him, “because I am going to make you cry.”

Henry says, “‘Sorry’ is such a weird name for a game. Only Miss Blanchard is going to mean it.”

Graham says, “Yeah, she’s going to kick your ass without mercy but somehow she’ll still mean it.”

Hearing this, Emma raises an eyebrow. Graham tells her, “You’ve clearly never played a game with your roommate before.”

Mary Margaret smiles and puts a box of tissues on the table.

They laugh until their sides ache, and that’s before they even open the bottle of wine. Henry has permission to be out late, since Regina thinks he’s being tutored at the library by Graham. The little apartment rings with noise: raised voices and cheers and protests and jibes. At one point Emma and Graham get into a shouting match, which Mary Margaret and Henry watch while eating the rest of the onion rings. At another point, Henry spends three forgetful turns moving other playing pieces than his own, and they have to go backwards through the card deck to detangle their plays. In what will be remembered as a lifetime achievement, Mary Margaret manages to wipe out two each of everyone else’s pieces in one turn; they have to take a ten minute break to recover, which involves the uncorking of the wine bottle.

Mary Margaret looks at the faces around her, shining and happy in the lamplight. Her pretty home is warm and safe and full of the people she loves. _This is enough,_  she thinks, and it is. Or, it has been, until recently.

She knows something has changed. It is in the very air she breathes, swelling her lungs and sitting in her throat, setting her blood vibrating with pure desperation. Something has changed, is changing. Something is breaking or mending. Only time will tell which one it is.

The clock strikes nine o’clock and Henry and Graham take their leave. “See you tomorrow,” Graham tells Emma, who smiles at him in a way that makes Mary Margaret incredibly happy and lonely at the same time.

“I wanted to say,” Emma tells her as they clean up. “I’ve been wanting to say. About Henry, I… um, thanks. You’re caring and intentional and kind to him. Thank you. When I wasn’t here, it—” She swallows. “I just… I sleep better, knowing _you_ were.”

Mary Margaret pulls two tissues out of the box and hands one to Emma. They dab their eyes and laugh at the same time.

“I know this is hard. You’re going to get through it. You’re a fighter. You’ll fight and fight, and we’ll fight with you, for as long as it takes until you get him back.”

Emma looks at the floor. “And then what?”

“Hey.” She looks up. “Wherever you’ve been, you’re not there now. You’re going to be a good mom.”

Emma manages a teary laugh and hugs Mary Margaret. “So are you.”

* * *

Mary Margaret walks down the hospital corridor to sign out at the nurse’s station. Her shift was quiet; nothing heart-wrenching has happened to anyone, which is always a relief, and most of her regulars were in a mood to chat, which means she is leaving later than usual. She is mentally compiling a grocery list for vegetable lasagna when two paramedics wheeling a stretcher come rushing down the hall. She moves to the side to give them room.

It is not until they have passed into the swinging doors behind her that she realizes who the body on the stretcher was, and she feels as though her blood has turned to lead.

“Fire,” his boatswain tells her; he is as white as a ghost. “It burned his arm and chest pretty badly. It was everywhere, I can’t believe that’s the only part of him that’s hurt—”

She waits with his crew. When the doctor comes out to speak to Smee, the others group around to hear him. A few words, and they straighten with relief. Seeing this, she gets up and goes quietly into the restroom, where she leans against the cold tile wall and finally drops the mask of calm reassurance she has worn all night for their benefit. Then she goes to Granny’s and picks up burgers and fries for everyone.

Anesthesia combined with shock and medication means he does not wake up until long after midnight. She is the only one in his room; the crew is getting an unworried night’s sleep, and Graham sent a shaken Smee home after interviewing him. Mary Margaret is falling asleep over a magazine and doesn’t realize the patient’s eyes are open and focused on her until he says her name.

“Hey,” she says, low and soothing, and moves her chair over to the bed. His head is sunk into his pillows as though too heavy to lift. White bandages cover most of his right arm and chest.

“What are you doing here?” His voice is tired, pained. Alive.

“Guarding you,” she tells him, an instant before it occurs to her that perhaps the truth should wait.

His expression does not change. “So it wasn’t an accident. Regina?”

She nods. “She’s insane. There’s no telling what she’ll try. And I was going to worry about it no matter what, so I figured I might as well do it here.”

“What did you find out?”

It was Emma and Graham who did the finding out, actually, and Starkey who put the pieces together for them—the arsonist had messed with the boat’s wiring so that the circuit breaker going to the solenoid kept tripping; the frustrated captain kept turning over the engine without realizing how hot things were getting. Once the flames hit the fuel tank, that was the end of that. They told Mary Margaret the whole marina reeked of gasoline.

“My boat?”

She shakes her head. “I’m so sorry.”

He stares at the wall opposite. “Funny. I had a dream about my boat. Only it wasn’t a boat, it was a proper ship. And you were there, you were… I’ve never had a dream like that. So vivid, I almost thought—” He shakes his head as though clearing it, then grimaces: the anesthesia must have done a number on him. “Did you catch her, at least?”

“No. She made her lackey do the dirty work.”

“The newspaperman?”

She nods. “He’s in custody but he’s not talking.”

“Figures.”

Mary Margaret looks at her hands, fingers twined together in her lap. He waits. She says, “This is because of me. Because you helped me.”

“And I’d do it again.” He looks stern. She begins to protest, when a huge yawn sweeps up from her lungs to her throat and effectively cuts her off. Observing this, he asks for the time. She tells him and his brows furrow: “Why am I still here?”

She nods to his bandaged arm. “It’s pretty bad under there. They were worried you’d lose the hand.” He turns a little grey as she says it.

“Wouldn’t that just be my luck.” He sighs, closes his eyes, but his expression is one of relief at a close call.

Even bruised and smelling of smoke, she cannot help staring at him—then flushes, caught, when his eyes open again to glance at her.

“Bet you’re curious about the other one.”

She bites her lip, wonders if he’ll think she’s prying if she tells him she is.

“Bloody crocodile, if you can believe it.”

Her eyes widen. Then she laughs. “You must think I’m pretty gullible.”

“No, I’m not lying. My brother and I were relatively stupid teenagers. We wanted to see the world, went on a safari, long story short, I now keep my adventures to more local waters.”

“What— _seriously?_ That’s really what happened?—And you picked _Storybrooke?_ ”

He grins. “What can I say? I’m a sucker for local flavor. How did I live before that barbeque place on 2nd?”

“I hear you. I’d probably wither away without Granny’s coffee.”

“Yes. Henry told me.”

She coughs, stares at her hands. “About that. I hope you didn’t get the impression—” She hardly knows how to say it.

“Don’t worry, love. I wouldn’t impose on you like that.”

She looks up quickly, denial flooding her eyes. “I would have said yes.”

He stares at the ceiling. “I thought you might.”

Mary Margaret feels as though someone has thrown ice water at her face—and then she burns all over, hot humiliation running across her skin. She hardly knows what to say, so she stays silent.

He says, “Listen, I don’t need you doing me any favors.”

“What?”

“You don’t owe me anything. And I don’t want your pity.”

She is annoyed. “Why would I pity you?”

“Because—you might recall—I’m missing a rather significant body part.” He raises his prosthetic hand. Scorch marks cover it.

She stares at him. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Nothing,” he says defiantly, “everything. Y’know, sometimes I get really bloody pissed off at the fact that I don’t have a hand anymore. But for the most part I’ve adjusted. I’ve made it work for me. It’s other people who can’t forget about it. Even if they start off understanding, they eventually resent the fact that I can’t do some basic tasks, or that a lot of basic tasks that they don’t have to think about, I have to think about. So what’s the point? Why bother? It always ends the same way.”

“Thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt.”

“I know better than to hope otherwise. As far back as I can remember, my life has been a neverending stream of pity dates. So, thanks but no thanks,” he tells her.

An incredulous laugh escapes her before she realizes he is serious. “Oh.” She makes her face solemn. ( _Pity dates!_ she will say to Emma, later. _Doesn’t the man own a mirror?_ ) “Well, if it’s any consolation, I can’t remember the last time I was asked out by someone who wasn’t only looking to get laid—unless that’s your motivation, too.”

He is a little gruff. “I’m not afraid of commitment. She just hasn’t come along.”

“All good things to those who wait,” Mary Margaret says lightly.

She has spent her entire life waiting. For something, anything.

She glances at him from under her lashes and purses her mouth thoughtfully, then adds, “Unless, of course, we’re talking about waiting to eat a gooseberry tart from lunch and leaving it within arm’s reach of a classroom full of fourth graders.”

The right side of his mouth crooks up. “Or waiting until the price of petrol drops to fill the tank, only it doesn’t,” he returns.

“Or forgetting wet laundry in the washer for a week.”

“Leaving raw meat on the counter.”

“Flipping the grilled cheese too late.”

“All the shopping on Christmas Eve.”

“Not using the restroom before a long meeting.”

“Aye,” he chuckles—and suddenly she knows what she is about to do and she speaks fast before she can stop herself.

“Killian Jones,” she says, and she cannot keep the smile out of her voice, “will you please have dinner with me? Nothing would make me happier.”

He looks at her cautiously, but no one could ever be accused of being capable of doubting Mary Margaret’s sincerity. He looks at the smile curving her lips, the satisfied light in her eyes, the way she is blushing.

His smile starts in one corner of his mouth and spreads across his face. “Aye. That would be grand.”

Her cheeks are still pink when Graham shows up to relieve her a few minutes later. He gives her a curious look but only says, “Emma says you have to teach her kid in the morning and Regina’s dirty tricks are no reason Henry should get a sub-optimal education. Her words. She must be pretty worried that the mayor’s going to show up here.”

Mary Margaret gathers her things as Killian watches. Graham moves the chair back to its proper place and settles himself into it. He looks rumpled and bleary-eyed, as though he was dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and got dressed in the dark, which is exactly what happened. Mary Margaret bids good night to the patient in the bed, who looks remarkably chipper in contrast.

“Get well soon, Captain.”

He shows his rascal grin, the one that’s already her favorite. “I have every intention of it.” They have settled that dinner will take place as soon as his bandages come off.

Graham gives her the exit code and tells her to leave through the main entrance because the nurse on duty has been told to watch for her. She privately bets the sheriff will be asleep before she even makes it outside. He makes a better guard than she did, armed as he is, but that will make little difference if he’s asleep when trouble comes. If Emma is worried enough to call her home, Mary Margaret cannot help thinking there is something to be said for at least staying alert. At this point, there is no telling what Regina might attempt. She glances at the captain, silently willing him to be on his guard. He nods slightly.

She hands him the magazine she was reading earlier. “Cover story,” she tells him. “The tell-all interview with the _Bachelor_ runner-ups that you never wanted to read. The nightmares will keep you up all night! You won’t be able to close your eyes!” He chuckles and tucks it next to his leg.

“Mary Margaret,” he says as she is leaving, as though just hearing her name for the first time. “That’s a mouthful. Don’t you have a nickname?”

*   *   *

Emma was not impressed with the plan Mary Margaret described to her—a picnic on the beach under the stars, she says, is something that only goes right in movies, and she rattles off predictions of sand in their food and freezing cold wind and unstable wine glasses falling over—but she subsided after being told the beach was Killian’s idea. When Mary Margaret walks out of the bathroom after dressing for the evening, however, Emma refuses to be pacified.

“ _You may not wear a cardigan._ ”

“You said yourself it’ll be cold!”

“No cardigans. You aren’t a teacher tonight.” She starts digging through her corner of the closet, two feet of mesmerizing, terrifying space that is expanding piece by piece as items migrate out of the trunk of Emma’s VW.

That reminds Mary Margaret. “Speaking of, I’ll have you know I have never taught a sub-optimal day of education in my life.”

“There’s a first time for everything. Including this,” and Emma brandishes a dress with a flourish.

“It’s red.”

“Exactly.” Emma grins. “Cardigan, off!”

“Emma, that is not picnic attire!”

“This is _date_ attire, and the picnic part is your own fault. Cardigan! Off! And then we’re going to do something about your eyes.”

Mary Margaret prays it will be over quickly.

Killian is exactly on time (Emma: “Want to bet he was standing in the stairwell watching the second hand on the clock?” Mary Margaret: “He is going to _hear you._ ”) and the look on his face when he sees her is worth all the trauma Emma has just put her through. He cleans up nice, himself. The fisherman’s sweater he wore on the boat has been traded for a simple black tee and gray wool coat. He has combed his hair and trimmed his beard and he smells like shampoo and crisp night air. Looking at him, she is struck again with the sensation from before, that no matter how little she knows him or how well she may learn him, all his edges and sides and corners, she already knows the heart of him—his fixed points—the fundamental things—as surely as she knows the sun will rise tomorrow, changeable as the weather may be.

He doesn’t look away from Mary Margaret until Emma says “Here!” and dumps the picnic basket, three blankets, and a bag of supplies into his arms. Mary Margaret smiles shyly at him, exchanges a _Wow_ face with Emma behind his back, and hustles downstairs with the sound of her triumphantly slammed door ringing in her ears.

What with nights steadily growing shorter, the sun is nearly down by the time they get to the beach. They have to light half a dozen candles just to see each other, but even with the wind as mild as it is the flames keep puffing out, and eventually he simply gathers up a pile of driftwood and builds a bonfire. The night is cool but not cold, and she wraps a blanket around her shoulders and sits close to him.

It is a first date like any good first date, consisting of non-stop conversation and plenty of laughter; except that it is different from any other because this time she is with him, and he is with her. She feels as though she is telling him everything she has ever known or done or seen or wanted. And still there is more to say, to hear, to reveal and uncover. She wonders if it is true, that learning a person takes a lifetime, and wonders what it would be like to spend a lifetime learning and being learned by him.

And when he kisses her at the end, sitting back against an old weathered log beside the bonfire that is dying low, his arms warm and holding her close, it is peace and agony and burning and light and home and lost and fullness and want, all wrapped up together.

* * *

Emma is sprawled across Mary Margaret’s bed reading case files when she gets home. Mary Margaret smiles at her across the apartment, floating over to the counter to put down her things, kicking off her shoes and dropping her coat haphazardly over the back of a dining chair.

Emma grins. “How’d it go, sunshine?”

Mary Margaret flops down beside her, making the bed bounce and shifting everything into the dip in the middle. She cushions her head on her arm.

“I like him. A lot.”

“Yeah. I think the cat’s been out of that bag for a while.”

“I think he likes me too.”

“Yeah?”

She murmurs, “Thank you for the dress.”

“Any time.”

They stay like that for a long time: heads pillowed next to each other, curled up while one talks and the other listens, voices rising in excitement or dipping down in quiet happiness, pulling up blankets or kicking them off; foreheads together, whispering and laughing like they are six years old and the world is still new.

* * *

“Hey!” Mary Margaret sings, swinging herself into the booth. The morning is sunny and all the leaves are turning colors and she got to walk through town knowing he is waiting at her destination.

He looks up and her heart plummets to the floor.

“What it is?”

His eyes linger on her before dropping to his coffee. “Ah,” he says, “the question I’ve been trying to figure out how to answer for the last two days. And I still don’t know where to begin.”

“Just say it,” she says, heart in her throat.

He runs his hand through his hair. “Everything that could possibly go wrong with my visa has gone wrong. A few things I submitted a long time ago to become a permanent citizen were misfiled, and I never knew. A lot of the forms I had to send in after the boat was destroyed were incorrectly completed. I guess I shouldn’t have put the idea of forgery in Regina’s head. She’s better at it.”

“What are you saying?”

“Long story short: I don’t have a boat, and I don’t have the money or the credit to buy a new boat, which means I don’t have a business, which means I don’t have a purpose here anymore. Which means the government won’t let me stay.”

“No—no, you can’t. There has to be a way—there has to be someone we can talk to—”

“I’ve been on the phone for two days, love. I can’t fight this war on this side of the ocean. I have to go home before they’ll let me back in.”

“When?”

“Twenty-four hours. I bought the ticket before I came here.”

She stares at him, too shocked to respond.

Ruby appears next to them, dropping plates on the table with a clatter. “Okay, we’ve got eggs over easy, stack of pancakes, hash browns and bacon, and a southwest omelet with avocado and an English muffin, two hot cocoas with cinnamon, and, of course, blueberry syrup.” She winks at Killian.

“Thank you, Ruby.”

“No problem, Captain. I’ll be around to refill your coffee.” She saunters away.

Mary Margaret puts her hand up to her forehead. He watches her over the steaming plates.

She shakes her head. “Surely there’s a loophole, _something_ —The fire was four weeks ago, you haven’t even collected insurance.”

“I’ve called every number at Immigration that I can track down. Most of them tell me I have to speak to the Irish consulate first. It’s a whole lot of red tape and automated recordings and stacks of forms proving the same thing five times over. But if I push back now, they might not let me come back. And I have to come back.”

She reaches across the table. He carefully lifts his arm, still tender from the burns, and takes her hand in his.

His mouth quirks up in what is almost a smile. “Is it too early to say I wish you were coming with me?”

She mirrors him, her eyes sad. “Is it too early to say I wish I could?”

Her phone rings, making both of them jump. Emma. She silences it.

“At least we have options,” he says, nodding to the phone. “Phones, email, skype. It will be as though I’m right here with you. We’ll have so much time together you’ll get sick of me, you’ll wish the wifi would fail every so often.”

She smiles because he’s trying so hard to draw one out of her. “Yeah. Better eat. It’s getting cold.” Her own stomach is in knots.

“Mary Margaret,” Ruby shouts across the diner. She holds up Granny’s red rotary handset. “It’s Emma, and she sounds upset.”

She has to go around the corner and plug her other ear with her hand, and even then she has to say “What?—what?— _what?_ ” before the voice at the end of the phone is loud enough to understand. The story it then proceeds to tell is almost so unbelievable and so awful that Mary Margaret falls silent, hardly fathoming what she’s hearing.

“I’m on my way,” she says.

She hangs up and turns, ashen, to a concerned Killian, who has followed her.

“Henry’s in the ICU.”

“ _What?_ What happened?”

“I don’t know, she was hardly coherent. It sounds bad, Killian, he—I’m so sorry, I have to go. I have to be there with her.”

“Of course you do. I’m going with you.”

He drives, darting through town on his black motorcycle, Mary Margaret riding pillion. They run through the maze of hospital corridors, both on their phones, trying to find Emma and Henry. She finally gets the correct wing and floor from Graham, and after an eternity of elevators and left turns, they are there.

The first person she sees is Regina.

A group has gathered in the waiting area, friends who have already heard and have come quickly to offer support and consolation. The mayor stands amongst them, sullen and red-eyed, silently accepting the sympathy that is her due.

Mary Margaret only hears the word _coma_ before a red haze descends and she remembers: this woman is the reason Killian has to leave. This woman has made Emma’s life a living hell since she came to town. This woman has spent years being as hateful as possible to everyone around her, even when— _especially_ when—they have done nothing to deserve it.

Killian has to keep a tight grip on her wrist to keep her from starting a fistfight right then and there. “Henry,” he reminds her.

Then they turn the corner and there is Emma, dark-eyed and devastated, and Mary Margaret does not have time to think of anyone else.

* * *

She wakes up in the hospital waiting room with a stiff neck and one arm tingling with pins and needles. His heavy leather coat is spread over her and his fisherman’s sweater is pillowed under her head. She remembers his mouth warm against hers, no goodbye spoken except for what she read in his eyes.

She checks with Emma—no change. She buys a crappy cup of coffee from a vending machine and goes outside to sip it while watching the sky lighten from dark gray to pale blue. Her breath comes out in faint puffs and she puts on the sweater. There are hints of gold around the clouds. It is going to be a beautiful day.

Without warning, the air around her ripples out in a wave, so quickly she hardly understands what she saw. The coffee cup falls from her hands.

She remembers.

Remembers deep ocean, remembers a thread of gold light, remembers a baby with her mouth and his eyes. Remembers arrows flying away from her fingers, remembers faceless soldiers in black, remembers her throat closing tight, remembers a silver hook. Remembers a cloud of purple encircling them and ending everything.

Then she is stumbling down the concrete stairs and out the entrance, running as fast as she can to the docks. Halfway there, she realizes: his flight departs first thing in the morning. He is already driving to Boston. He might already be on the plane.

If he remembers, he’ll have turned around. If he still can.

She detours to her apartment and gets her car. Hoping against hope, she races up the street to the road that leads out of town.

A thin morning fog has settled here, the sun not yet strong enough to burn it away. It cloaks the asphalt, forcing her to slow down slightly so that she doesn’t drive off the road. Sunrise is still weaving its way through the pines, and so she does not register the figure ahead of her until he shouts the alarm. She slams on the brakes and veers right, tires squealing, and parks cockeyed on the shoulder.

She is clambering out of the car and he is running, and they collide somewhere in between, a tangle of arms and sweaters and mouths searching for each other.

She wraps her arms around his chest and presses herself as close as she can. Here is his body, warm and strong, here are his arms, hugging her so tight she cannot breathe comfortably (not that she would have him loosen them for anything in this world or another), here are his hands holding her head to his, here is his mouth smiling against hers.

Just for this moment she wants nothing more than to stand here and feel the swell of his chest as he breathes. She has him back. He is alive, they are alright, they have finally made it here.

“Your hair’s gone,” he says, laughing against her bare neck.

She leans back and looks and looks and looks at him: the face she knows better than her own; the shifting colors of his eyes; the kindness that is as much a part of his face here as it never could have been when he was a pirate. All the lines of the past and present have converged. Everything Snow thought was lost and broken has returned to Mary Margaret, proving its strength and truth in its resilience, in its endurability. They have found each other twice.

Then she closes her eyes and rests her face against his shoulder. “She did it,” she sighs.

Twenty-eight years of curses and darkness and separation and impossible odds, and they have prevailed. _Emma_ has prevailed. Emma has saved them.

He runs a thumb across her cheek. “There’s a witch back there who stole our lives. We going to do something about it?”

“Yes,” she says, pulling him close to kiss him again. “In a little bit.”

He is happy to reciprocate.

She says, “How are you still so close? I thought you were long gone.”

He should have been, only his motorcycle broke down at the Storybrooke exit, he tells her. He had been trying without success to call a taxi when his memories returned. He was running back to town when her car came tearing up the road.

There is a red light in his eyes that she knows well. “Visa, my ass. I’ll bet Maine doesn’t even know I’m here. And she made me ashamed of my missing hand. Bloody witch! I had my hook lifetimes longer than I ever had the hand!”

Thinking about her past makes her head hurt—she isn’t sure yet which memories from this world are false and which she really did live. The only ones she is sure of are the months with Emma.

She tells him, “Our kid is pretty cool.”

“Is she?”

“She’s a fighter. Strong. Mouthy, she got that from you.” He snorts. “Brave. Heart of gold.” She cannot put into words how proud she is of her daughter, of her friend. But he knows; she sees the same pride glowing in his eyes.

They look at each other, sharing the same thoughts without having to say the words—of their hopes fulfilled, the heartbreak it took to get them to this moment.

She cannot put into words how much it hurts to have been absent for Emma’s entire life save a handful of months, doubled by the knowledge that Emma hurt for every day of every year. There are no words for what it is like to carry around the heart that desperately loves her daughter for twenty-eight years without knowing that love was there. She will tell Emma later, _I have missed you more than I could ever explain._

“Let’s go see if our kid’s alright.”

“Whatever she’s been up to, I’ll bet Regina’s not far behind. I’m going to need my hook. I saw it in the pawn shop once when I got Smee an antique compass for his birthday.” He says, a little peevishly, “And I know where the _Jolly_ is. She disguised it as a trash barge. A lot of things are starting to link up.”

She slips her left hand into his right one. They begin to walk back to the car.

She breathes deeply of the cold morning air, loving the heat of his palm. The birds have begun to sing. In the forest around them, lines of sunlight shoot down to the mossy floor. Her eyes drink in the gold rim of the pine-topped ridges, some parts of the landscape mottled orange and red.

“Killian,” she says, startled. He glances at her, then follows her gaze to the forest to their right. His grip on her hand tightens.

High and distant, a thick cloud of purple is rolling down the wooded slope towards the town. Lightning sparks within it, and it billows as it pours out from its source, unquenched and unending.

They know well what it is.

Magic.

**Author's Note:**

> ETA: since people keep subscribing to this, I feel I should mention that this work is complete. I will not be rewriting any following seasons. Glad you like it, though!


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